A Middleman extension for indicating a current (active) link using aria-current.

If you're new to aria-current, Léonie Watson wrote a wonderful article detailing its usage.

1. Add middleman-aria_current to your Gemfile:

   gem "middleman-aria_current"

2. Install the gem:

   bundle install

3. Activate the extension in config.rb:

   activate :aria_current

middleman-aria_current provides a current_link_to helper, which wraps the built-in link_to helper. It checks the URL of the current visited page and outputs an aria-current attribute if it matches the URL in the link.

As an example, below is a typical website navigation where we use current_link_to for each link (using ERB):

<nav>
  <%= current_link_to "Home", "/" %>
  <%= current_link_to "About", "/about" %>
</nav>

Now, when you visit /about, the link for that page will be given the aria-current attribute:

<nav>
  <a href="/">Home</a>
  <a href="/about" aria-current="page">About</a>
</nav>

By default, current_link_to will output the page value for aria-current. You can also pass it one of aria-current’s other accepted values: step, location, date, time, true, or false:

<%= current_link_to "Step 1", "/step-1", aria_current: "step" %>
<%= current_link_to "Step 2", "/step-2", aria_current: "step" %>
<%= current_link_to "Step 3", "/step-3", aria_current: "step" %>

Provided that you are currently visiting /step-2, the output will be:

<a href="/step-1">Step 1</a>
<a href="/step-2" aria-current="step">Step 2</a>
<a href="/step-3">Step 3</a>

For styling current links, you can use a CSS attribute selector:

[aria-current]:not([aria-current="false"]) {
  font-weight: bold;
}

Note that we exclude styling the link if aria-current has a value of false. This is because false is a valid and useful value for denoting a link that does not represent the current item within a set.

See the contributing document. Thank you, contributors!

middleman-aria_current is copyright © 2017 Tyson Gach and thoughtbot, inc. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.

middleman-aria_current is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc. The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.

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